


all we need's a miracle

by reliquiaen



Category: Plague Tale: Innocence (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-14 16:26:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reliquiaen/pseuds/reliquiaen
Summary: i have arrived in another new fandom. post-game (so beware spoilers). canon compliant (ish). about putting their lives back together with the pieces they have left.“We went shopping!”“We don’t have much money.”“Like Mélie showed me.”Amicia rolls her eyes and shoulders the door open into the yard. “That’s not shopping, Hugo.”“That’s what she called it.”“If you don’t pay for what you take with money then it’s called stealing.”





	1. Chapter 1

It’s nearly three weeks before they make it out of Aquitaine. Lucas does most of the driving but Amicia is determined not to linger any more than they have to and some nights (a lot of nights) she will drive through a village rather than risk staying there.

(And Hugo has gotten quite adept at stealing food. No doubt they have Mélie to thank for that.)

It’s close to another two weeks before they find somewhere to stop for any length of time. Not that their time spent travelling should be any indication of distance; Beatrice swoons in and out of consciousness on the regular and they often find themselves camped in a field somewhere or hidden in a copse while Lucas sends Amicia scurrying about looking for this herb or that fungus, anything to help treat her wounds.

At first glance, Beatrice’s injuries were mostly superficial; but as it turns out, she’d been running on adrenaline, fear, and grit for so long that her body gave out on her without warning one morning. Hugo, naturally, was inconsolable for the three or four days it took Lucas to decide she wasn’t going to die on them. Not again.

So, they’ve made it _outside_ Aquitaine, but not far. And every time Amicia so much as spots a glint of metal in a field she tenses up, reaches for her sling and the stack of pebbles that always rides with her. Once she was even spinning the leather around her wrist before Hugo grabbed her elbow and pointed, “Look, Amicia.” Not an inquisition soldier, just a farmer in his field who’d slung his pitchfork up to rest on his shoulder and caught a bit of fading sunlight.

This isn’t the first such incident, and it won’t be the last, she knows that. It also doesn’t help that every time the sun sinks her skin starts to crawl. Any slight rustle in the brush around them, any sufficiently strong breeze to stir the long grass, is enough to get her reaching for her alchemy bag.

There are no rats, however. Not here. Not anymore.

And here – while not _home_, not even Chateau d’Ombrâge (which has its own host of memories) – is better than nowhere. After a few days, it even looked properly lived in.

Lucas had taken over one of the rooms and filled it with the books he’d managed to save, ingredients, a window garden in which he was slowly growing a variety of plants with alchemical (and culinary) uses, he’d even found a rusted old cauldron in the barn and with some elbow grease and sweat had returned it to a useful condition. Hugo, still too young to do the kind of heavy lifting they needed, made an excellent shepherd, and – having rounded up the few pigs and sheep that had somehow survived against all odds – was determined to keep them alive.

(The look he shot Lucas and Amicia as he patted a pig’s nose and said, “Won’t let the rats near you, I promise,” was enough to fill her with renewed guilt. Survival had its costs, but that didn’t make them easy to pay.)

The house itself was run down. The plague had reached even outside Aquitaine, it turns out, and many people in this area had fled. Even though it hadn’t reached _quite_ the levels here as elsewhere, it had gotten bad _enough_. Most of the people who’d left never returned and – thankfully – no one questioned when the four of them moved into the abandoned house on the outskirts of town.

It was easy enough to sell the townsfolk on a story: a mother and her three children fleeing what had happened, leaving their past – and their dead – behind them, looking to start over. Those who heard it nodded solemnly and never questioned; without Robert it was a simple matter for them to conclude what had happened, if not the how or why of it.

And even if they never spoke of it, the other losses sat heavily in Amicia’s heart; friend-shaped spaces that would remain forever empty, places in the house, at their tables, in their _lives_ that would never be the same. Some nights, Amicia walks around the perimeter of the field with a torch in one hand (bad for night vision, but old habits die hard and all that) and sling in the other (just in case) because she can’t sleep for replaying that horrible burning night at Chateau d’Ombrâge, can’t help but wonder if she’d been faster, if she’d thought a little quicker, been just a smidge more insistent, if Rodric would be with them now.

She stands on the stump of a low stone wall and stares out over the ocean, moonlight and stars twinkling across its endless, flat surface. It’s a peaceful image and if she slows her breaths just enough, focuses her mind on _only_ the glitter, maybe that peace will find a way between her ribs to her heart. Maybe she can sleep.

“Amicia?”

She leaps – nearly falls off the stone – when she spins, hand grasping woodenly for her sling. But it’s only Lucas. He has a crude woollen shawl wrapped around his shoulders; none of them know how to knit let alone shear sheep, that’s something they’ll have to work on. She focuses on that thought, that mundane, boring problem and closes her eyes.

“You startled me.”

“I see that.” When she opens her eyes, he’s smiling in that sad, lopsided way he has. His face has grown pale, sunken around his eyes from exhaustion mostly. “Why are you out here?”

She shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Lucas steps up beside her and for a while they’re silent, just watching the waters beyond the cliffs. Something about knowing he couldn’t sleep either helps. It’s nice to know Lucas is still with them, something solid in a world all crumbling around them, even as people begin to rebuild there are still things falling apart.

After a long moment, Lucas sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly, measured. He rests a hand on her shoulder when he turns. “Come inside. I’ll make something to help you sleep.”

Something a lot like tension oozes from her shoulders. “Only if you have some too.”

He laughs, something they’ve all fallen out of practice with, but it holds just enough sincerity that – for now – she can believe it’ll be okay in the end.

\--

The sun sets over the ocean, so standing in the little clearing behind their house (that Hugo insists will one day be the best flower garden in the world) in the late afternoon can be an exercise in blindness. This is what it’s like for Amicia when she’s dragging a hind back from the wooded area to the north of town. She shifts the leather straps over her shoulder into a more comfortable position and redoubles her efforts to haul the carcass up the slope, squinting all the while.

It’s because of this that she doesn’t notice the man at the door until she’s almost upon him. When she does see him, however, it’s her shaking hands in a race against his much larger ones to see who will be faster. She reaches her sling at the same time as his grab her elbow to steady her – and she needs steadying as she nearly trips backwards over the deer.

“Sorry to surprise you like this,” he says softly. He reaches up to touch his torn messenger’s cap and smiles through a scruffy beard. He’s not wearing any identifying insignia that she can see.

Amicia does not release her sling all the same. “What do you want?”

If he’s put off by her brusque tone, he makes no mention of it. “My… son was taken by the rats. I was looking after his animals and one of his hounds gave birth but my wife and I…” he pauses, looks over at the cart he must have brought with him. “We’re not staying, and we can’t look after them all.”

The door creaks and Amicia immediately orients her body to keep Hugo away from the man. “You have puppies?” Hugo asks, peering around her hip.

“Four of them.”

“We hardly have the resources to look after four dogs,” Amicia tells the man firmly.

Hugo’s little hand grabs at her fingers. “What about just one, Amicia? Please?”

She glances down at him (a mistake, probably), but she thinks about how she can’t be here to protect them all the time. If this man had been with the inquisition he could’ve done anything while she were away. He could’ve burned the house down and taken Hugo with him. Even with Vitalis dead, having Hugo snatched remains a fear that nips at her stomach every day.

“One dog,” she agrees. “But you have to help look after him, alright?”

“Alright,” he says, tugging on her hand now. “Can I pick?”

The man chuckles. “One of them was claimed already, but you can pick from the others.”

Amicia has to give him a boost up into the cart and she climbs up with him. If this is all some elaborate scheme to take Hugo, she’ll be damned if she gets left behind. But in the back of the cart, tied up with rope, are three small dogs; all with the same floppy ears and white-orange colouration of grand Anglo-Français hunting dogs.

Just like Lion.

Amicia’s heart stutters as their tails thump against the wood and they turn their big brown eyes up at them. She has to clear her throat when Hugo starts petting them awkwardly on their soft little heads.

“Are you sure only one, Amicia?”

“Yes, Hugo. We don’t have a lot of food.” Or money with which to buy food.

“Alright.” One of the dogs strains against the rope and nearly bowls him over; it’s mostly orange with white around the throat. Hugo just laughs. “This one.”

The man leans over the side of the cart and slices through the rope while Amicia helps Hugo down. Their new dog needs no such help but when Hugo scoops up the end of the lead, he’s nearly pulled off his feet. Amicia shows him how to wind it around his wrist and how to set his feet for a tighter hold. He’s not very good at it.

“Thank you,” says the man before clambering up into his seat. He tips his hat one more time before urging the horses down the road towards town.

“Now,” she says, turning back to her brother where he’s now pinned to the ground by the dog. “What are we going to call him?”

Hugo wiggles out from underneath him and manages to keep his face away from the dog’s enthusiastic licking and slobbering. His expression is serious, something that came from his time away with Vitalis (something she tries not to think about).

“If I pick a name will you tell me not to use it?”

“Depends on the name.” Somewhere in the back of her mind she’s bracing for Hugo to suggest calling it ‘Nicholas’. Or after their father, perhaps.

Instead he says, “Arthur.”

She smiles, relief washing through her so fiercely she falls to her knees beside him right there on the grass beside a still-waiting deer. “Arthur?”

Hugo scratches behind the puppy’s ear. “Because he died saving me from myself.”

And a five-year-old is much too young to be saying things like that even if he’s right.

“Arthur it is then.”

When she stands, Hugo takes her hand again, holding the rope with the other. “Will you show me how to train him?”

“Of course. Father was a knight, you know. It’s only right you know how to train a dog.”

“And use a sling.”

“And use a sling.”

\--

Arthur, it turns out, is a girl.

\--

Outside, the last snows have started to melt so when Hugo wakes her up earlier than normal, Amicia can’t imagine it’s for making snow shapes. (Or snowballs to throw at Lucas.)

“Come quickly!” he urges, tugging forcefully on her hand.

“Give me a minute, Hugo,” she mumbles, wiping sleep from her eyes with her free hand. “Why are you up so early?”

“Lucas took me into town.”

Fear lances through her then and _that’s_ enough to wake her up properly. “He what?”

“We went shopping!”

“We don’t have much money.”

“Like Mélie showed me.”

Amicia rolls her eyes and shoulders the door open into the yard. “That’s not shopping, Hugo.”

“That’s what she called it.”

“If you don’t pay for what you take with money then it’s called _stealing_.”

Hugo gives her a look that says, quite clearly, ‘I don’t believe you’. “Stealing is bad.” And his tone implies that this was a _good_ thing so it doesn’t count.

Amicia laughs, smooths a palm over his hair and asks, “So what did you get?”

On his knees in the dirt, Lucas is fending Arthur off with one hand while he sorts through little hessian satchels in his basket. He looks up when the door creaks and smiles. “Amicia. Excellent. Will you do something about this dog, please?”

She whistles, but Arthur is not trained enough to know what that means yet, so along with the sound, she picks up the end of the rope and pulls gently until the dog is reeled in to her feet. She ties the lead to the fence away from Lucas and whatever he’s doing.

“Aha!” He’s pulled a single little bag from the basket and placed the rest to the side. “These are for me, the rest…”

Hugo bounces on the balls of his feet. “Will you help me with them, Amicia?”

“What are they?”

“Seeds!” Hugo flops down to poke through the bags, brows drawing together as he tries to work out what each one is.

“Some are vegetables,” Lucas adds, “and some just pretty flowers that Hugo liked.”

“Alright.” She kneels down beside her brother and picks up a bag. It has ‘turnips’ burned into the fabric and she shows it to him. His reading has been improving with Lucas’ help, but she has him sound it out for her anyway. “So turnips. Do you know where you want to plant them?”

Hugo gestures with his whole body when he points under the windows. “Flowers there. And vegetables over here.” He indicates a little further away, across the path from the pen where the pigs have space to wander.

“Then let’s get to it.”

Lucas had found other items in the barn useful for planting crops – a hoe, some pitchforks, and a half dozen little trowels; all of them in possession of some amount of rust but no less good at their jobs for it. Amicia shows Hugo how to use the hand trowels to dig little holes and plant seeds. Hugo carries their tiny pail to and from the well with the focus only he can muster despite how it slops over the sides.

“You can give them too much water?” he asks when she warns him not to drown them.

“Yes, of course. The same as you can have too much water.”

“Oh.” He slows down after that, muttering to himself and the seeds, asking if they’re still thirsty, is that too much, is this more like a bath for them, would they prefer warm water?

She smiles.

The smile disappears abruptly when Lucas hollers from inside. She’s on her feet in an instant, but when he comes barrelling up to the open window above them he has a broad grin splitting his face.

“Come quickly,” he tells them, breathless. “Your mother is awake.”

The pail spills water _everywhere_ when Hugo drops it and barges towards the door. “Mummy!” Even on his little legs, he beats them both to her bedroom. “_Mummy_!” Hugo bounds over to the bed and clambers up onto the lumpy mattress where Beatrice is sitting propped against the headboard.

“Hello, my little boy,” she whispers, voice croaky and hoarse, smoothing his hair down.

“Careful, Hugo,” Amicia cautions, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed. “Don’t bump her.”

Her words remind him of the injuries Beatrice is still recovering from and he loosens the grip around her neck. “Sorry, mummy.”

Beatrice presses her palms to his face and smiles, it’s thin, pained, but she’s clearly doing her best to hide that from Hugo. “It’s alright. I’ll be okay.”

Hugo lifts his hands from her shoulders to her face but doesn’t touch. “You look sore.”

She barks a laugh and winces immediately. “Yes. And I’m _so_ tired.”

“Lucas will fix you.”

Her eyes dart up, away from Hugo, past Amicia, to the door where Lucas lingers like a ghost. “He’s doing a wonderful job. Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

But Beatrice clucks her tongue and he smiles sheepishly, caught in his lie. “_Thank_ you.” Her eyes sweep back to Amicia and all at once she feels weighed, every scrape catalogued, every wink of missed sleep filed away. “Where are we?”

“We left Aquitaine a few weeks ago,” Amicia tells her softly. “This is somewhere along the coast of Poitou-Charentes. We haven’t gone far.”

She sighs. “Far enough. And this place?”

“A lot of the townsfolks fled the plague,” she says.

“This house was abandoned,” Lucas adds. “We’re… staying here for… well…”

Beatrice smiles at him. “As long as we need to.”

His return smile is constructed of relief. He’d been worried that Beatrice wouldn’t want to linger when she woke, that she’d have some sort of plan and they’d be uprooted again. Amicia understands his reticence, they’ve all been jostled around by circumstance more than enough for one lifetime.

“Amicia and I are starting a garden, mummy,” Hugo chimes in. “Come see it.”

She cups his face with one hand. “When I’m better, I will. I don’t think I can stand just yet, my dear.”

“That’s alright, mummy. Lucas will make you better soon.”

“Come on, Hugo,” Amicia whispers, standing, holding a hand out to him. “The sooner mother gets back to resting, the sooner she can see our garden.”

He cuts a quick glance to Amicia before looking back to Beatrice. She nods her head and he scoots closer to press a quick kiss to her still-bruised cheek. Then he’s bouncing from the room, back to his garden.

“He seems well,” Beatrice says before Amicia can follow him.

“He is. Better than I thought after…”

“As long as he doesn’t dwell on it then he shouldn’t have any problems.”

She turns back halfway to fix her mother with a look both surprised and wary. “Lying to him isn’t a good idea.”

“It’s not a lie to simply never bring it up.”

Amicia opens her mouth to press further but she doesn’t want to start an argument, doesn’t want to be reminded of what happened to Hugo. He’s young, even Lucas thinks he’ll be fine, that he’ll forget. Maybe he will, but Amicia won’t.

“Get better soon,” she says before she leaves.

\--

The house has three bedrooms: Beatrice in one, Hugo in another. The third remains empty. Lucas sleeps on a pallet in the laboratory, he insists that the floor is perfectly comfortable and after Chateau d’Ombrâge he doesn’t think a bed will ever suit him again. He tells Amicia she should have it, “A lady should have a lady’s room,” he repeats more than once.

She sleeps in the main room in front of the hearth. When he asks, Amicia tells him it’s because the sound of the fire cracking puts her to sleep, that it doesn’t creak as much, that the warmth is comforting. She doesn’t tell him that the fear in her gut every night keeps her awake and she doesn’t want to wake the others when she inevitably rises to go for a walk. She doesn’t tell him that sleeping here means if intruders sneak in, she’ll be the first one to greet them, and since she’s the only one able to defend herself properly, that’s how it should be. She doesn’t tell him that she cannot – _will_ _not_ – lose anyone else and sleeping here with Arthur is like guarding them.

She doesn’t tell him, but she can see in his eyes that he knows.

It’s been two days since Beatrice woke up properly for the first time. She’s asleep more than not, but her increasing alertness is a good sign. What’s less good is that Beatrice insists Amicia keep Hugo away as much as possible. She says it’s because she doesn’t want Hugo to see her so unwell, doesn’t want to have to hold back from hugging him, because she’s still so bone-weary and doesn’t want to disappoint him. Amicia thinks that while this may all be true, there’s more to it.

She’s been kept in the dark about enough of these things and look where it got them. Still, she bites her tongue. Maybe it’s better this way.

She jabs the poker into the fading fire, tips one of the partly burned logs over and it flares up again, crackling happily. Over the snapping sound, she almost doesn’t hear the quiet creaking of a door, floorboards, but her body reacts instinctively.

“Amicia?”

Hugo’s voice.

He pads out into the living space, barefoot, wrapped in a blanket. “Can’t you sleep?” she asks him when he settles beside her, leaning into her stomach.

“No.”

Amicia runs her hand over his head, his shoulder, soothing him as best she can. Newly practiced sisterly instinct, she supposes. “Is something the matter?”

He shakes his head against her side, but the way his little fingers clutch her shirt so tightly, shaking just slightly, she knows he’s lying. He’s still not very good at that, thank goodness.

“It’s alright, Hugo,” she reminds him. “We’re safe.”

“Is mummy?”

She blinks, confused. “Yes… What do you mean?”

He sniffles. “She’s so weak and tired. Will she really be alright?”

Amicia sighs, bending forward so she can press a soft kiss to his temple. “Yes, Hugo. She’ll be just fine.”

“But… it’s been so long…”

For a moment she’s silent, thinking about how best to explain to him. Eventually she settles on, “Do you remember those headaches you used to get? When we were looking for Laurentius?”

“Yes,” he says, voice small. “I’d get tired and you carried me.”

“That’s right. Mother is unwell like that, but… worse.”

“Worse than that? Will the rats come for her too?”

“No, Hugo. Not rats. It’s like how when you walk too far in a day and you get tired and sore and you can’t stand anymore.”

“And you have to sleep.”

“Yes. Mother has to sleep because she was _very_ tired and sore.”

“From walking?”

Her throat tightens. “No. Not from walking. From what Vitalis and his men did to her.”

“They hurt her?”

“Yes. I don’t know how, but it made her sick. Worse than your headaches made you feel.”

“So she has to sleep more than I did.”

“That’s right.”

“Alright. So after she’s slept some more she’ll be better?”

“I hope so.”

“Me too.”

His fingers relax just a little but he doesn’t let go of her shirt; instead he curls closer to her and she thinks he’s gone to sleep. The even rhythm of her hand brushing over his hair, the last few crackles of the fireplace are enough to make Amicia’s eyes droop too.

But then he says, “Amicia?”

She hums.

“When is Mélie coming back?”

Her hand stills, her heart lurches; it takes her a moment to return to the present. “I don’t know, Hugo.”

“I miss her.”

Her jaw works, her hand shakes. Then, “I miss her too.”

\--

Once the last vestiges of winter have faded away it’s easy to pretend everything is better. They’re not living in a stranger’s house far from home, they haven’t adopted Lucas who has no family to speak of, Beatrice is recovering slowly but still more asleep than not, they didn’t survive a nightmare plagued by rats and murderers, haven’t seen friends die.

It’s so easy to stand on the bluff teaching Hugo how to spin the sling up to its most effective and shoot rocks at the wooden targets she’s set up for him. Sometimes he hits the wood, but he mostly misses. Not that this discourages him, he’s more determined when he misses, his little brow furrows in the seriousness of a child, rather than the seriousness she sees sometimes when the inquisition trained boy flickers to life. That’s been happening less, thankfully, but it’s still _there_.

She wonders if that will affect the Macula within him somehow. Wonders if this will awaken something horrible. Wonders if teaching him to protect himself is worth the worry.

“Amicia!”

They both turn at Lucas’ shout and Hugo snatches her hand fiercely. But when Lucas bursts out of the house, his body language doesn’t read as stressed or fearful, more… annoyed.

“Your dog has eaten my mushrooms again,” he calls.

Amicia laughs, but Hugo – remembering how much dog vomit he cleaned up last time – gasps, releases her hand and scurries over to Lucas, already demanding some of his _sorcery_ to help fix her. She follows more slowly. Past their little wooden fences behind which the pigs wallow and sheep munch on grass. They traded some of their sheep for a cow, and she stands among the sheep, one tall spotted animal amidst a field of fluff.

Hugo’s flowers and vegetables are growing nicely, too, in their beds under the window sills. No flowers yet, but the plants are strong and green. She and Lucas will have to find time to plant some fruit trees in the only plot of land they have left. Anything they can grow themselves will save them money in the long run and they don’t have much.

She finds them in Lucas’ laboratory; Arthur is lying on her belly looking unwell in the way of dogs, her head in Hugo’s lap.

“Should I fetch a bucket?” Amicia asks.

Hugo glares at her.

“She cannot be coming in here,” Lucas mutters to himself. “Many of these ingredients are toxic to dogs. We’ll have to work that out too, I suppose, keeping the door barred somehow. Ah, here.” He throws some powder into his flask and swirls it around. “Let’s take her outside.”

“Come on, Arthur,” Hugo says, gently smoothing her fur. “You have to get up and take your medicine.” She doesn’t respond to him beyond an upset whimper, so Amicia scoops her up, glad she’s still small enough for this.

Getting her to take the mixture requires all three of them and when they finally manage it she leaps from Hugo’s grasp and bounds away, clearly not thrilled with it.

They spend the rest of the afternoon keeping her out of the house while she empties her stomach. And then fixing the door to the workshop so she can’t nose her way in again.

\--

“Amicia, where’s the ladder?”

Something clatters obnoxiously from the roof, _plinks_ once against the whatever Lucas is calling that, and thumps off the edge to the dirt below.

“You’re going to kill someone, Lucas,” she calls back, striding over to investigate. Thankfully, it hadn’t been near the garden where she and Hugo were weeding, but it _could_ have been. She picks the hammer up and wipes soil from the head. “Over here.”

There’s more rattling as he scuttles across the wood planks and tile of the roof and then his head sticks out over the edge. “Ah. That’s where the hammer went. Might I have it, please?”

She flips it over with a quick flick of her wrist so she’s holding the handle and hefts it. “Should I throw it?”

His eyes go wide. “No! Thank you, I’ll come and get it.”

“I can bring it to you,” Amicia says, laughing, but she barely gets the words out before Lucas has swung a leg over the side and is sliding down.

He tucks it, handle down, into his waistband and gives her a strange look. When he opens his mouth there’s a pause before actual words which Amicia assumes means he changed his mind about what to say. “Don’t forget to check on your mother,” he says and then starts to clamber back up to the roof. Amicia holds the sides for him because he’s not the most coordinated. He nearly pitched head-first off it the first time he tried to get up there.

When Lucas reaches the top she lets go and steps back to peer up at him, eyes squinting, one hand shading her face against the early afternoon sun.

“Are you going to be alright?” she asks as he disappears.

Lucas calls something back at her but it’s muffled; all she hears is, “… course not…” and, while not reassuring, doesn’t sound pained or anything of the sort so she sighs and turns back to Hugo.

“Where did you get to?” she asks him.

He looks up, hands pausing in the act of patting soil down around a newly planted seedling. “This one is a peach!”

Amicia sinks slowly beside him, lifting up the tray of fruit trees they’d bought (the Mélie definition of ‘bought’) from a trader who came through a few days earlier. The first trader they’d seen in a long time. Amicia felt a little bad about the stealing but Lucas was right, they weren’t going to get far on what they had without a little bit of law-breaking here and there. And Hugo’s “I hope Mélie would be proud” had been too adorable for her to question it long.

She just hoped it didn’t become a habit.

There are just two seedlings left, apples by the red ribbon tied around their miniature trunks, and she plucks one out of its slot.

“Can I do the last two, Amicia?”

“Of course.” She hands him the paper wrapped bundle. “Do you have somewhere you want to plant them?”

“Yes.” He wriggles to his feet and she follows him up the rise past the sheep pen to the highest point before the grass slopes down again towards the bluff. “Here.”

And with that he folds his legs and starts to dig a first hole right on the crown. Amicia crouches beside him and holds the apple seedlings while he carves out a spot. “Why here?” she asks him.

His little brows draw together in concentration. “You told me the story about the knight’s challenge,” he says. “I want to take it someday. You can show me how, like papa.”

Something sharp and tearing sets into her heart, pulls her ribs inwards painfully, piercing, making her gasp. She must consciously loosen her hold on the seedlings.

“Alright. Just like papa.”

Once they’re done, Hugo goes to get Arthur from the barn. Amicia stands on the hill for a moment before turning to head back to the garden, fetching a pail of water from well as she goes. She’s watering the newly planted future-trees and out of the corner of her eye she can see Hugo with Arthur, he’s trying very hard to keep the leash short and not let the puppy get too far ahead of him, but they’re both so small and Hugo is easily caught up in the enthusiasm.

Lucas is halfway over the edge of the roof when there’s a scream from inside.

Amicia drops the bucket and snatches her sling from her belt, yelling, “Lucas stay with Hugo,” before she’s barging her way inside, fitting a rock to the leather, wrist spinning it around.

There’s no one in the living room and the only person inside is Beatrice, so whatever’s happened it must be in her room. She takes the corner wide and nearly jars her shoulder she hits the wall so hard. Amicia plants her feet wide in the doorway, eyes snapping immediately to her mother, who is sitting in the single chair by the foot of the bed, away from the window so she doesn’t catch a cold.

Hands on the window sill, in the process of leaving, is another person. They look over their shoulder when Amicia bangs through the door.

It’s the red hair that has her dropping the sling, shoulders slumping.

They stand there a beat (or four, according to Amicia’s still hammering heart). Their intruder doesn’t continue to clamber out the window, instead, settling a little more solidly to the floor, eyes wide. Those blue, _blue_ eyes widen further when Amicia crosses the space in three hesitant strides and throws her arms around her shoulders.

“Mélie,” she breathes, tucking her nose into the other girl’s neck.

Mélie takes the hug awkwardly, stiff to start, hands fidgeting as if she’s never been hugged before. Maybe she hasn’t. Amicia never got that far into learning about her; but _if_ she hasn’t that’s something that needs to be rectified.

Slowly, she relaxes, leaning into Amicia. Mélie’s hands lift and settle around her lower back. “Hey, princess.”

Amicia laughs and it sticks in her throat. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

It’s infinitesimal, the way Mélie’s grip tightens on her, so subtle Amicia almost convinces herself she imagines it. “Neither did I,” she admits.

“I’m glad you did.”

There’s a cough from behind her and she remembers her mother. Perhaps a little more hastily than necessary, she releases Mélie and steps away. Something about the smile that tilts across Beatrice’s face is just _too_ knowing.

“We’re not being burgled, then?”

Mélie snorts. “Why? You got something worth burgling?”

“You don’t remember Mélie?” Amicia asks. “She was with us when we…”

Beatrice’s smile flickers and dies. “I don’t remember much, Amicia, I’m sorry.”

She swallows. “Right. Well… She helped us. Mélie saved me and Hugo from the English, helped us get in to find you and Vitalis.”

Mélie leans into Amicia’s shoulder, taps her arm. “Yeah, and you still owe me for all those things.”

It’s teasing, so Amicia just rolls her eyes. “Right. How about we start with a meal?”

Before Mélie can retort with something suitably scathing, Lucas calls, “Amicia? Are… Is everything alright?”

“Yes, Lucas. We’re fine.”

He pushes the door in, Hugo peeking around his knees, and when they see Mélie they step in fully. Hugo squeals, “Mélie!” and just about knocks her over he barrels into her so hard. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeah.” She looks up from running her hands over his hair to meet Amicia’s eyes. “Me too.”

He releases her and bounces up as high as he can to get her attention again. “Guess what? I got to practice buying like you showed me!”

“_Really_ now.” She drags the first word out, smile crinkling her eyes, puckering the scar on her cheek. “Did you get away with it?”

“Yes! I’m getting very good.”

She ruffles his hair this time, tousling what she’d just smoothed down. “We’ll see about that. And what about you, princess? How do you like _buying_ things?”

“With money, Mélie, thank you.”

Beatrice makes a strangled sound in her throat, just putting two and two together. “You taught my son to _steal_?”

The impish smile that curls her lips is defiant, proud, aware of her worth and unafraid to defend it. “We can’t all be rich, can we?”

“Sometimes we do things we don’t like to survive,” Amicia agrees, eyes not leaving Mélie. Perhaps she’s scared if she looks away Mélie will vanish. Perhaps. Perhaps she says that to annoy her mother. Or perhaps something else tugs at the lining of her stomach. Something she can tuck away and ignore until later.

Much later.

\--

“A thief, Amicia? Really?” Her tone carries with it all the unsaid comments about how Mélie is a bad influence, a criminal, someone to avoid.

Amicia ignores it all. “She saved us. A lot. She’s our _friend_.”

Beatrice clucks her tongue, twitches away. Amicia has to reach over to finish tying the new bandages splinting her broken arm.

“Her brother died,” she whispers. “Saving my life, saving Hugo from Nicholas. We named the dog after him.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “That’s where Arthur came from?”

“He was a good person,” she replies. “They were just… born a little less lucky than us. That doesn’t make them bad.”

Beatrice watches Amicia in silence but whatever conclusion she comes to can’t be read from her features. She runs her knuckles over Amicia’s cheek and mutters, “Be safe.”

Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

\--

“Look! We have piggies!”

Hugo hasn’t let go of Mélie’s hand since he woke her up in the morning. Maybe he’s afraid that she’ll disappear too. She doesn’t seem to mind – has indulged him in his tour of their new house, the yard. When he’d shown her Lucas’ workshop, she’d wrinkled her nose and told him it ‘smelled of sorcery’. Hugo had giggled and dragged her away, content in the knowledge that Lucas really _is_ magic.

Mélie hefts Hugo up so he can sit on the wooden fence (he still doesn’t let her go). “Did you name them?”

He looks horrified by the suggestion. “Am I supposed to name them?”

“Not if you’re going to eat them.”

Hugo leans forward to look past Mélie at Amicia. “We’re not going to eat them, are we?”

Mélie laughs at whatever the expression is that blooms on her face. “I… Maybe, Hugo.”

“Have you ever had pork, Hugo?” Mélie asks him. And when he nods slowly she leans the tiniest bit closer and adds, “That’s pig.”

He pulls a face. “Poor piggies! Well I can’t name them now.” He wriggles forward and slides off the fence, pulling Mélie with him. “But Amicia let me name the puppy.”

“You have a dog?”

“Yes. Come on, you should meet our puppy.”

Arthur is in the barn; still not fully trained, they can’t let her in the house. But her tail thumps fiercely against the dusty floor when they open the door and she bounds over, tongue lolling, ready to lick Hugo. She doesn’t eye Mélie nearly as much as a good guard dog should eye a stranger, so perhaps that’s what they should work on.

He collapses to the ground, finally releasing Mélie’s hand so he can use both of his to pat the dog. “This is Mélie,” he tells Arthur, pointing. “She’s a friend, so be nice to her.” Arthur probably doesn’t care one whit about who Mélie is, but her tail wags a little harder. “Mélie, this is Arthur.”

Mélie, who had dropped to a crouch beside him, sinks fully to her knees. “Arthur…?” Her eyes bore into the side of Hugo’s head but he doesn’t notice. “You named your dog after my brother?”

“He protected me,” Hugo says. “Even after what I did, he saved Amicia and me.”

Mélie’s eyes lift to Amicia and she will _swear_ to the day she dies, this is the first time she’s seen Mélie cry. Oh, for sure, she probably definitely cried after Arthur died, but she was so full of fury and pain and pride that she never let anyone see it then. This sort of public vulnerability is… a development.

Amicia sits down beside her, takes her hand. “He deserved better. We… Hugo wanted to remember him.”

Mélie slumps sideways into her, hiding her face in Amicia’s collar. “I miss him,” she says thickly.

There’s not much Amicia can say to that. ‘I know’ and ‘me too’ feel so hollow. So she just holds Mélie a bit tighter.

“Did I do something wrong?” Hugo asks, eyes wide and fearful.

Mélie sits up, wipes the back of her hand over her nose. “No, Hugo. Thank you.”

“We can call her something else?” he goes on hopefully. “Maybe Art, instead.”

She coughs a wet laugh and offers him a hand. Slowly, Hugo crawls towards them and they sit there in a somewhat uncomfortable (yet somehow comforting) cuddle pile. At least they do until Mélie says, “Wait. _She_? Arthur’s a _girl_?”

This time, it’s Amicia’s turn to laugh at the horrified look on Mélie’s face.

\--

It’s cool for a mid-spring evening; the last vengeful tendrils of winter loathe to surrender and Amicia has to pull her coat a little tighter, wishes she had brought her scarf outside with her when her inevitable evening meander rolled around. The sky is clear above her and the ocean calm below, the horizon where they meet is so hard to make out as to be non-existent. It gives this sense that she’s really standing on a cliff overlooking the entire inky black universe and one step over the edge will send her tumbling into an infinite, sparkling void.

And somehow _that’s_ the image that calms her down.

She wriggles her toes in her boots, they’re worn now, beyond scratched, in need of replacing, but the cobbler in town lost his life to the rats and his apprentice doesn’t leave the house much. Could be she has to wait until the next trader comes through. She insists on thinking in ‘whens’ and not ‘ifs’ because thinking in ‘ifs’ makes her hands shake.

(_If_ they get past the armed soldiers.)

(_If_ they don’t get bitten by rodents.)

(_If_ they make it through the night.)

(_If_.)

Something stirs the air at her shoulder and without even looking around, Amicia knows it’s not Lucas.

“Can’t sleep?” Mélie asks.

She shakes her head. “You?”

Mélie huffs a mirthless little laugh. “I haven’t slept much in months. It’s not new.”

They lapse into silence, but it’s a silence filled with all the things neither of them know how to say. The words swirl between them and are whisked out towards the ocean. Amicia shivers in the breeze.

The next thing she knows, Mélie has stepped closer – close enough to feel her warmth – and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She doesn’t move away.

“I’m not mad, you know,” she says.

“You have the right to be.”

“You didn’t… get Arthur killed.” Her voice is stiff but earnest. “He… It’s not Hugo’s fault and it’s not yours, princess.”

Amicia looks at her and Mélie’s face is stern. “If you hadn’t gotten mixed up with us…”

Mélie shakes her head. “Look. Arthur and me? Your mother’s right, we’re criminals. One way or another something could’ve killed us any day. If not that day, then another. I’m _mad_ about what happened, but the bastards who killed him got theirs.” She looks away, jaw clenching. “At least he died doing something _good_. There are worse ways to go.”

“I thought you hated me,” Amicia admits, talking to her profile. “Me _and_ Hugo. For what happened, for all of it.”

Mélie scoffs. “I tried hating you when you said you had no money. Didn’t _work_.” She looks back finally. “I’m not the only one who lost someone. You lost your father. We lost Rodric. It happened. I just… didn’t want to be around you while I… worked through it.”

“You didn’t have to mourn alone.”

She hunches her shoulders. “I wouldn’t call it _mourning_.” There’s something in her tone when she says it that tickles at Amicia’s curiosity, it tells her there’s a very interesting story wrapped up in where Mélie was, what she was doing. But now is not the time to hear it.

It _is_ time to hear the answer to, “Why did you come back?”

When Mélie looks at her this time it’s with the sort of barely concealed shock that says she’s surprised Amicia even has to ask. “It was just me and Arthur,” she says. “Our whole lives. And then there was you and Hugo and your dork alchemist boy. You’re the closest thing to friends we’d ever had.” She doesn’t say it, but Amicia hears the ‘and I had nowhere else to go, I was lonely’ on the end; the bit Mélie is too proud to ever say aloud.

“Well…” she says, reaching out to take Mélie’s hand. “Welcome home. We missed you.” Amicia bumps their shoulders together and a ghostly smile flickers across Mélie’s face.

“Your mother didn’t.”

“She doesn’t know you, Mélie, so her opinion doesn’t count.”

Mélie wiggles her fingers until they’re threaded through Amicia’s and then she squeezes. “Thanks, princess.”

“You can call me ‘Amicia’ you know. Everyone does.”

She laughs, and it’s almost _cheerful_. “Come on then, _princess Amicia_. I think it’s time we both tried to find sleep.”

Amicia rolls her eyes but allows herself to be tugged back to the house. Mélie doesn’t take the spare bedroom, says she’s never slept on a real bed and she’s not about to start now. Something twinkles in her eyes when she says it but Amicia isn’t about to investigate.

When she lies down in her spot by the hearth, Mélie joins her. Amicia assumes it’s having company that makes her skin prickle that way, makes her feel awkward.

“Good night, Mélie.”

“Mmhmm. Sleep tight, princess.”

She rolls her eyes once more for good measure.

\--

And if that’s the first solid night’s rest either of them have had in a long time? They don’t mention it. Even if they both _know_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> could be a part two comin. i have one (1) whole idea left for this that i wanna include but i didn't wanna smoosh it in here where it didn't fit so. maybe elsewhere. no promises tho.


	2. all i need is you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said i had one (1) more thought to add but i lied so here's all of my feelings. i have a lot of them.

Beatrice is back on her feet – her wobbling, teetering feet – within the week. Lucas says this is about what he expected, if a little earlier than he might like, fastidious as he is. But Amicia can’t help but wonder how much of Beatrice’s insistence that she’s tired of sitting around has to do with Mélie’s continued presence. (She suspects her mother does not trust Mélie one little bit, no matter what Amicia might say.)

“Mummy!” Hugo, at least, is relieved and thrilled to finally get to show her around the place. Starting with the garden. “Look at the flowers Amicia and I planted!”

Lucas takes one of the rickety chairs outside so Beatrice has somewhere to sit when she gets tired, which is still often enough that he follows her around like a lost shadow. She sinks gingerly onto the seat and Hugo rambles on about the plants, flowers and vegetables and how Lucas takes him into town sometimes and how they bought them. He’s the most excited Amicia has seen in a while.

Beatrice shoots her a reprimanding look when he mentions buying things – buying how Mélie taught him. Buying when Lucas isn’t looking.

Mélie, smartly, has made herself scarce, still no doubt uncomfortable with the quiet judgement from Beatrice.

When Lucas extracts a laughing promise from Beatrice that she won’t stand without help, he goes back to whatever it is he’s been doing up on the roof. Amicia takes that as her cue to leave as well, letting Hugo have some time with their mother. She goes to the barn, determined to work on, at the bare minimum, getting Arthur familiar with some basic commands.

Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise her that this is where she finds Mélie.

Sitting on the straw-covered floor, using her finger to guide Arthur through motions. She’s got the dog to sit and wait, something Amicia has been working on for days, and she doesn’t notice that she’s no longer alone. So Amicia just watches.

Mélie lowers her finger slowly from shoulder height to almost the floor. With her other hand, she presses on Arthur’s shoulder, encouraging her to lay down, which she does after a moment and gets a little piece of meat for her trouble.

Once Arthur has finished eating, Mélie holds her hand out, palm flat and facing towards the dog. She stands and Arthur stands with her. She rotates her wrist so her palm is facing the floor and lowers her hand. Arthur follows the movement and sits and when Mélie uses her single finger to indicate going lower, she lies down (and gets another treat). Mélie then duplicates the stop hand sign and takes a step back.

Arthur doesn’t move.

She steps back again.

Arthur stays where she is, eyes following Mélie fixedly.

When Mélie steps back further she gets very close to bumping into Amicia. Before she can, Amicia says, “You’re good with dogs.”

And Mélie jumps fair out of her skin.

She whirls, hand flying out, slowing down just enough the when she slaps at Amicia’s shoulder that it doesn’t hurt, is more of a friendly gesture. “Shit, Amicia,” she huffs. “Wear a bell or something.”

“From someone who told me I had the stealth of a stampeding bull, that’s a compliment,” Amicia replies, laughing.

Mélie takes the last step so she’s beside her properly and turns back to Arthur who is still lying on the floor, tail wagging. Honestly, it’s a testament to Mélie that Arthur was so focused on her that Amicia’s arrival wasn’t given away.

“We had a dog when I was younger,” Mélie tells her quietly. “Father hated it, so we had to be quiet. All non-verbal instructions.”

There’s an implication in there that goes with what Mélie had told her previously about her father. It’s not a _nice_ implication so she says nothing.

“You should get a box or something and take her into the house,” Mélie adds. “It’s easier to housebreak in a house, you know?”

“I guess.” Lion had been trained by her father with several other hunting dogs, not allowed in the house until he proved himself. Arthur was alone though, so that probably makes sense. “I’ll see if Lucas still has one of those wooden crates.”

There’s a long beat of silence before Mélie asks, “How’s your mother?”

“In the garden with Hugo.” Amicia turns to study her face, there’s a tic in Mélie’s jaw but her eyes stay fixed on Arthur (despite a waver now and then suggesting she wants to look away). “Now that she’s up you can’t avoid her forever.”

“I don’t want her judgement.”

Amicia laughs softly. “Mélie, the first thing you did when we met was turn us in to the English. I got over it.”

_Finally_, Mélie meets her eyes, and it’s with a cheeky smile. “That’s because the second thing I did was bust your ass out.”

“You expected compensation.”

“Didn’t get any.”

She hooks her arm through Mélie’s elbow and turns her to the exit. “You got me.”

The way Mélie twitches at that is unusual, but she whistles for Arthur (who is only too happy to bound after them), so maybe it’s nothing.

\--

“She’s not leaving, mother.”

Beatrice doesn’t turn away from the window where she’s watching Mélie and Hugo play fetch with Arthur. Hugo doesn’t throw the stick very far and Arthur hasn’t quite figured out how to bring it back yet, but they’re working on it. If asked, Amicia knows her mother would say she’s watching Hugo, but she’s _also_ keeping an eye on Mélie. Just in case.

(Just in case of _what_, Amicia can’t imagine, however.)

“You don’t know that.” Her voice is quiet, measured.

Amicia steps closer but Beatrice doesn’t turn. “What is it about her? About _her_ but not Lucas?”

“What does she want from us, Amicia? We don’t know why she’s here. I don’t trust her motivations.”

Her mouth works, wondering where to start with that. It doesn’t address the question about Lucas either, but Beatrice makes no indication that she’ll continue. “How about a place to call home?”

Beatrice barely reacts, a tilt of her chin and nothing more. Amicia leaves.

She takes her sling and walks, just walks. When she goes past where Hugo is playing, Mélie looks up, eyes bright, smile soft. She cants her head to one side, a silent question. Amicia shakes her head and keeps walking.

Storming might be a better word for it, actually. There’s this unspent energy – flickering angrily, burning – just beneath her skin and she doesn’t know what to do with it. She stalks up the slope to where the apple trees are starting to poke through the soil, where the wooden targets are still set up for Hugo. She paces past them, back and forth, focusing on calming her agitated breathing.

It takes her a good long while to figure out that the simmering in her veins is directed at her mother for being so… so _blind_. Judgemental maybe, hasty to her conclusions. So quick to dismiss Amicia’s appraisal of Mélie’s character. She trusts _Lucas_ but not Mélie who they’ve really only known marginally less time. So marginal as to be inconsequential given everything that happened.

So she paces, hoping to work the frustration out of her system. It works some, but once the initial burst of energy is gone she feels drained, like she did after sneaking past French patrols. She scoops up some of the stones still lying around from the other day and fits them to her sling.

Her pot shots are half-hearted, she misses as many as she hits and when she runs out of stones she collapses to the grass. Back warmed by the sun, she watches gulls swoop over the sea and tries not to think about anything.

She sits there for maybe half an hour and then stands, sighing. At some point she’s going to have to have a proper conversation with her mother about this. And if that means she has to pick a fight to get somewhere then she might as well get it over with.

When she gets back down the slope Mélie is gone. Arthur is tied to the fence but she seems happy enough to sit where she is and watch Lucas show Hugo how to do whatever it is he’s doing. Something to do with the contraption he’s been fixing to the roof, no doubt.

(She makes a mental note to ask him about that some time.)

For now, she offers them a wave when they look up and heads inside to find her mother. Which means if she’s not in the common room and she’s not in Lucas’ laboratory when she pokes her head in, that means she’s in her room, probably reading.

The door has been pushed to, which is weird, Beatrice kept it closed often when she was really unwell but since she’s been up (hasn’t had to sleep in the middle of the day as much) it’s been open more than not. Amicia puts her hand to the wood, intending to open it slowly in case her mother is asleep.

Before she can, Mélie says, “Look, whatever. You have a problem with me, fine, most people do. Leave Amicia out of it.”

She _doesn’t_ open the door.

There’s a beat before Beatrice responds. “She told me you saved them.” It’s not a question and Mélie, stubborn as ever, doesn’t reply until it becomes one. The silence stretches almost until it’s unbearable, then Beatrice adds, “Did you?”

“Would you believe me if I said I did?” Mélie snorts. “My brother and I got away from the English but they caught your kids and yeah, we went and broke them out.”

“Why?”

“Lucas said she’d pay us.”

Amicia can picture her mother’s face _perfectly_: haughty and smug both but suppressed by disappointment. She’s seen it often enough.

“She didn’t, obviously.”

“And why did you come here? Still looking for something to make it worth your while?”

There’s a soft shuffling sound and Amicia smiles at the image her brain conjures of Mélie folding her arms, chin lifted. What she says is at odds with the picture. “We went through _hell_, me and Arthur.” Her voice is soft, so fragile and broken. “No one _ever_ valued two runaway thieves. But Amicia? She looked at me when I picked the lock on Hugo’s cell in that camp like I’d given her the world. Didn’t matter what I’d done, who I was, that I _stole_. That little boy of yours is everything to her and saving him meant I mattered _too_. They’re my _friends_. And I have no one else but them anymore.”

No one speaks for the longest time. Then something bangs sharply. Probably Mélie kicking something.

“Besides,” there’s a definite smile in her voice when she continues, “it’s not your opinion that matters.” That right there is a challenge if ever Amicia heard one. That was Mélie saying, ‘What are you going to do, kick me out? You and what army?’ It’s nice to think that even if Hugo and Lucas both look to her mother now that she’s awake and doing much better, Mélie doesn’t care one bit about the authority Beatrice thinks she wields. “They’ve already made it worth my while.”

On her life, Amicia has no idea what could possibly going on in between spoken words. Could be anything and she holds her breath waiting to hear what happens. There’s a creak, but that could be a number of things. More shuffling, probably Mélie shifting on her feet.

“Fine.” It’s her mother’s voice, flat, no hint at all to what it might mean beyond the obvious. Her lungs are starting to ache. “It doesn’t mean I trust you, but… fine. Stay.”

There’s this cocky smile that Mélie wears sometimes, the one that says she knows the best punchline to a joke and she’s never going to share. “I wasn’t asking your permission, highness.” Yes. That’s the one. “But so long as you’re not going to kill me in my sleep, thank you.”

Amicia backs away from the door before she can be caught eavesdropping, exhales at last.

\--

“Call it a tentative agreement.”

“She’ll grow on you.”

Beatrice fixes her with that _knowing_ look again. “I’m sure.”

\--

“Your mother is a scary lady,” Mélie whispers to her that night, eyes glittering in the firelight.

Amicia rolls onto her side properly. “I’ve always believed she was so terrifying that my father simply couldn’t say ‘no’ when she approached him.”

Mélie laughs, stifles it with a fist so she doesn’t wake Hugo in the next room. “I believe it.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

“She’s not chasing me out, princess,” she says, voice and eyes equally soft. “I’ll be just fine.”

Translation: _I’m not going anywhere. Not this time_.

\--

Once spring gets closer to summer, the flowers under the window start to bloom. Much of the tending to the garden is left to Beatrice and Hugo, they know more about looking after plants than Amicia, but today Hugo tugs her by the wrist out into the garden. He’d been shifting impatiently from foot to foot for the twenty minutes she’d spent working with Arthur (who had taken to the crate Mélie insisted upon quite well).

“Alright, Hugo,” she laughs. “What’s the hurry?”

“Come and see!”

He pulls her to the ground by the flowers – all blooming now, a chaotic rainbow of colours – and snaps one stem off with his little fingers to slide into her hair.

“Aren’t they pretty, Amicia?” His whole face is split with a brilliant, beaming smile.

She lifts a hand to make sure the stem is tucked properly into her braid and then smooths his hair down. “They’re lovely. Here.” She reaches out for another one and slides it behind his ear. The stalk isn’t quite long enough, however, so it keeps tipping forward.

“Oh no,” he says, distraught. “It won’t stay put!”

She takes it gently from him before he crushes it trying to keep it in place. “Let me show you something Louise taught me.”

“Who’s Louise?”

“She…” Amicia’s throat catches, flashes of the night she and Lucas revisited the de Rune estate making her hand shake. “She worked at our house, you may not remember her, but that’s okay. Louise was very nice.”

“Alright. What did she teach you?”

Amicia smiles at him. “That any flower will sit nicely on your head if it has enough friends.”

She fetches some lengths of straw from the barn and together, she and Hugo sit cross-legged in the garden weaving flower stems together and tying them off with string when necessary. It takes them a while, a good portion of the afternoon disappears into their work, but eventually Amicia holds up a flower crown for Hugo to wear. She settles it as low on his brow as she can, pleased when it holds its shape, and he grins at her.

“It’s so pretty, Amicia!”

His is a little messier, his fingers not dextrous enough to hold the straw in the right curve while winding flower stems together. Amicia reaches out to help him and while he plucks flowers from the garden, telling her where they got their names and what they mean and what kind of tea they make, she threads them together.

“I bet this one likes company, so we’ll put him over here with these, how’s that?”

“Oh yes! Yes, and can this one be with them too? They always look so lonely.”

“Alright.”

“We should show mummy!”

“When it’s done we can go inside and maybe she’ll wear it.”

“Yes!”

There’s a loud bang from the barn and they both look up. Lucas has been moving his things out of the laboratory in the house and into the barn so there’s less clutter. He thinks they can turn that space into another bedroom. (Privately, Amicia worries he’ll just take up sleeping in the barn.)

Nothing else happens though, so he must have just dropped something. When she turns back to Hugo, her eyes catch on Mélie, leaning against the doorframe, watching them.

“Getting ready for another ball, I see,” she says when she realises she’s been spotted.

Without missing a beat this time, Amicia says, “Yes. You should come.”

Mélie slouches away from the door towards them. “Don’t have a fancy dress, princess.”

“It’s not a requirement.”

She arches an eyebrow. “There are requirements?”

“Yes.” Amicia stands and with exaggerated slowness to give Mélie every chance to back away (she doesn’t), settles the second flower crown onto her head. “You must wear flowers.” It might be scary how easily she’s distracted by Mélie, if only she had the inclination to think about it. Luckily, she doesn’t.

Colour flares across Mélie’s cheeks. “Oh,” she sighs. Her eyes look a little lost but she doesn’t glance away even if the way she lifts a hand to fiddle with the flowers and bites at her bottom lip suggests she might like to. “Sure.”

Something thrums to life in Amicia’s chest, something that’s not the thorny sorrow and regret and despair she usually experiences – this is warm and hopeful.

Then Hugo asks, “What’s a ball?” and the moment is over. What it had been a moment for, she’s not sure.

Mélie recovers first, her cheeky smile back in place and she finally frees Amicia of her attention. “It’s something you rich folks do. You get all dressed up fancy-like and go dancing.”

His eyes positively _light up_. “Oh! We should do dancing!” He leaps to his feet so fast the action is almost non-existent; he’s simply sitting and then standing with nothing in between. “Can you teach me, Mélie?”

“Me?” Her tone is a squawk caught somewhere between indignant that he’d assume something like _that_ about her, and amused. “I can’t dance.”

“I’ll teach you.” The words are out of Amicia’s mouth before she even processes them. Mélie’s head whips around so fast she must hurt her neck and the _look_ she gives her… it’s… _something_. “I’ll teach you both.”

The glitter in Mélie’s eyes holds a hint of something dangerous, something like a promise, and it makes Amicia want to retract her statement.

She doesn’t.

\--

Lucas does _not_ start sleeping in the barn. He constructs a makeshift bed to squeeze into one corner and turns the rest of the room he claims as his own into a tiny, aspiring library. Mélie laughs even as she helps him hammer more planks of wood to the walls as shelving.

He doesn’t laugh when she asks if he’d like her to ‘buy’ some books for him.

Just asks if she’d like to read any of them and smiles when she rolls her eyes.

\--

“How did you even end up here, Lucas?” Mélie asks, holding onto the ladder while he wobbles his way up carrying an armful of scrap-metal and seemingly random lengths of wood.

“There was a wagon, Mélie.”

She laughs. “No. I mean. What happened that you got all tangled up in that craziness?”

Amicia looks up from where she’s fixing a fence knocked over in a recent rainstorm. Mélie is waving a hand absently in her direction but is watching Lucas carefully to make sure he doesn’t fall. In fact, she barely seems aware that Amicia is there at all.

He grunts as he heaves his pile of stuff onto the roof. “They came looking for my master, Laurentius.”

“Bless you.”

Lucas glares at her. “Give me a hand up here, would you? You’re agile.”

“You’re not asking for help just so you can push me off, are you?” But she’s already half-way up when she asks and he ignores her.

“Laurentius was a brilliant alchemist,” he explains. “He worked with Lady de Rune, and he was a wonderful man.”

“Not your father?”

“No, but he was sort of like that to me. I… I’m an orphan. Laurentius took me in and taught me his craft. I owe him everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault the rats broke into the house and set everything on fire.”

“They did _what_?”

“Well technically they knocked over some of the equipment in the house and it exploded.”

Mélie laughs loud and honest. “No wonder Arthur liked you so much.”

“He did?” Lucas sounds surprised.

“Yeah. He did.” There’s a long pause before she continues and when she does, her voice is solemn, “You _are _moving everything explodable out of the house, right? You promise?”

Lucas starts laughing with her. “Yes. I promise.”

“Sorry about your teacher.”

“We’ve all lost someone,” he mutters, so softly Amicia almost can’t hear him. “It’s who we have left that matters.”

\--

Everything about the land smells better after rain; cleaner. But the wet grass seeps through the cracked seams of her boots and gets her feet wet, so when Beatrice is gone from the house one morning post-rain-shower, Amicia grumbles about going to look for her. She can’t have gone far, but any distance at all and her stockings will be soaked.

With a last sigh, she leaves the others gathered around the fireplace in the common room (Lucas is trying to teach Hugo and Mélie something to do with numbers), and heads outside into the chill morning.

She does a lap of the house but finds nothing, no sign of her mother in the garden or by the pig pen so she heads for the barn. Now that Arthur is more or less house trained, she’s been inside with them every evening, but Lucas had finally finished moving his alchemy things a few days ago so maybe she’s doing some sort of work.

Beatrice is, in fact, not in the barn. Lucas’ equipment stands silent in one corner, their cow is chewing cud up the other end, clearly having come inside to get out of the earlier rain.

Amicia blinks at the cow. She blinks back. It’s unclear whether she expects the cow to tell her where to find Beatrice or not. Still, when she walks past, she rubs the cow’s nose before leaving.

On a whim, she heads up the slope towards the apple trees which are growing nicely even if they won’t bear fruit for a few years. And that’s where she finds her mother.

Beatrice is crouched, her arm newly freed from its sling still tucked to her chest, and the other hand resting on a pile of rocks she must have stacked herself because they weren’t there the previous day. Her head is bowed, eyes closed and she doesn’t notice Amicia stop a little ways behind her. When she stands, Amicia can see she’s been crying.

“Amicia.”

“Sorry. I didn’t…”

Beatrice holds her hand out and after a beat she takes it. “It’s alright.”

The topmost rock on what Amicia now recognises as a cairn has been carved with a name: Robert. That’s all it takes for Amicia to start crying as well.

Her mother pulls her close, presses a kiss to her forehead and a hand over her hair.

“I miss him so much,” she sobs.

“So do I.” Beatrice’s voice is thick with emotion. “Lucas says you went back. Was he…?”

Amicia shakes her head, not wanting to relive that. Not wanting her mother to live with the image either she says, “You don’t want to know. He’s gone.”

Beatrice sucks in a deep, shuddering breath. “But we’re not. He’d be so proud of you, Amicia. _So_ proud.”

She sobs harder.

\--

Over the next week, several other cairns join Robert’s on the hilltop.

One for Laurentius, made from the stones Lucas carries up from the beach and a small pouch of somnum.

Another for Rodric accompanied by the rusty hammer and tongs he’d left with them.

And one for Arthur. Mélie leaves a bag of beads on top and takes Amicia’s hand when she stops beside her.

\--

“Finally giving up on sleeping on the floor, huh, princess?”

Amicia looks up from where she’s wrestling with some bedding to find Mélie smiling from the doorway. “Actually,” she says, cracking her back, “I thought you might like it.”

“You remember what I said about beds, right?”

Amicia sweeps her hand at her lopsided creation. “This _definitely_ doesn’t count as a bed.”

Mélie steps to her side and glances down at it, humming. “You’re right. Bed-adjacent, maybe.” She sinks down onto it carefully and smiles. “So you’re gonna keep sleeping out there, then?”

Laughing, Amicia sits beside her. “Doesn’t seem to matter what we do, there are never enough rooms for one each.”

“Make Lucas and Hugo share.”

“That’s hardly fair. Hugo won’t be five forever.”

“But he’s five _now_.”

Amicia leans into her side. “Which shelf would you put him on?”

Mélie laughs too then, tipping back into her. “Good point. There are no shelves in here.”

“You want to share rooms with my brother? _Mélie_!”

Her face scrunches up adorably. “Ew, no.” She pauses, that red colour bruising her cheeks again. “I wouldn’t share a room with a boy who’s not my brother.” She looks away as if the most fascinating thing in the world is hidden in the whorls on the wall.

It takes a second, two, before it clicks. “Oh, you mean you’d share with me.”

Mélie shrugs one shoulder. “Why not? We’ve been sharing the hearth for weeks.”

“Alright. Just don’t _steal_ all the blankets in winter.”

“Ha, ha.”

\--

For someone who never had anything growing up, Mélie’s sticky fingers translate to eclectic interior decorating when given a space all her own. Or… mostly all her own.

She has Lucas help her put a shelf in one afternoon and fills it with knickknacks she picks up around the place. An odd seed pod here, some seashells there, a few things Amicia is entirely convinced she lifted from someone in town, a bracelet made of the same beads in the bag she left on Arthur’s cairn. The sorts of things that probably seem meaningless to people, but it’s the little memories, any small happiness, that’s worth hanging onto.

So Amicia adds some of the trinkets she’d collected: an amulet, a rosary, one of Hugo’s old wooden knights, a lonely chess piece. Mélie smiles at her in that soft, warm way that sets something in her chest to stuttering.

It’s this exact feeling she’s sitting on the back of the wagon trying _not_ to think about while watching absently as Lucas is gathering some herbs from the little garden he’d planted for his alchemy when there’s a shrill shriek from the barn.

She’s off the wagon and sprinting before Lucas even puts down his basket.

Amicia skids around the open door, sling in hand, eyes scouring the interior, but all she can see is Mélie, one arm hooked around a post and standing on a hay bale swearing profusely.

“… the actual _fuck_, Hugo?” is the tail end of her expletives that Amicia hears.

Hugo, bless his little heart, has clearly backed a few steps away from her and his expression is the purest form of dismay and absolutely devastated that she’s ever seen. He has his hands clasped around something held to his chest. “I’m sorry, Mélie. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

At a more sedate pace, Amicia steps into the barn. “Are you alright?” she asks Mélie, offering a hand to help her off the bale.

Something flashes across her face, but she accepts, bouncing a little when she hits the floor. “Yeah. Just startled me is all.” She steps over to Hugo and bobs down into a crouch. “Where’d you find your friend?”

Amicia stands behind her and watches as Hugo folds his hands open revealing a little brown rat. Immediately the hairs along her arm prickle, but the animal just looks around, blinking its brown eyes against the sudden light and twitching its nose. “He was in the pen with the sheep.”

“By himself?” Amicia’s words come out far more strained than she would like and Mélie looks up, smiles softly and turns back to Hugo.

“Yes,” Hugo says. “All alone. He listens to me like the others. But he’s scared; _they_ were never scared of anything.”

“Is he…” Mélie trails off, there’s a tension in her shoulders that even Amicia can see, so maybe she’s not as comfortable with this as she’s projecting to Hugo. “Is he like the other rats? From before?”

Hugo shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He’s different, feels different.”

“If he bites us…”

“He won’t.”

Mélie huffs a laugh. “But _if_ he does… will we get sick?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?” Amicia presses. Sure, the rat looks harmless enough, but one rat always does until it has a hundred friends, a thousand.

He nods once, sharply. “I’m sure. He’s not sick.” He pauses, then adds, “I think… I think they’re getting better.”

Mélie rocks backwards onto her heels and offers Amicia a thin smile. “You’re a regular animal handler, you are.” She tousles his hair and everything. “Does this one have a name?”

“Can I name a rat?”

Laughing, Mélie says, “We don’t eat rats, kiddo.”

“Well,” he says, brows crinkling together. “Mummy said you had a doggie, Amicia.”

“That’s right. Lion.”

He lifts the rat closer to his eye level. “I’m going to call him Bear.”

Mélie laughs harder. “A good name.”

Hugo trots over to her and holds Bear up for her to see. Amicia doesn’t touch it, isn’t sure she could if her life hung in the balance, but she says, “Hello, Bear,” and runs her hand across Hugo’s hair, smoothing down what Mélie had just ruffled up. “Play nice with Arthur.”

“He’ll be good, won’t you, Bear?”

The rat only squeaks.

And if it means something else to Hugo, he doesn’t tell them.

\--

Hugo takes to carrying Bear with him on his shoulder. The look on Beatrice’s face the first time he sat down for dinner with a rat on his head was priceless. She began to enforce a new ‘no animals at the table’ rule, however, much to Hugo’s disappointment.

Mélie admitted later, in the quiet of their room, that she wouldn’t ask Lucas to bunk with Hugo now. Isn’t sure she could sleep knowing there was a rat in the room, even if it wouldn’t kill her.

Amicia agrees. She wonders if this is what all healing is like: learning to understand that the horrible things behind you can’t hurt anymore, but that reminders of them will still aggravate the wounds. Like a bad joint getting stiff in the rain.

\--

She finds Mélie on the hill one evening, squinting into the last rays of the sinking sun as she stands in front of Arthur’s cairn, wringing something between her hands. She looks… calm.

Amicia turns to leave her to her silence, but Mélie speaks. “Do you ever feel guilty?”

“For what?”

“Being the one who lived.”

After a second to suck in a breath, Amicia steps up beside her. “Every day.”

Mélie inhales deeply, her hands are shaking. “Just… It was awful and it happened and now it’s over and… what? I just have to live my life? Without him? He’ll never get to see this.” She drops it – Arthur’s woven headband – onto the cairn. “How are we supposed to move forward?”

At first, Amicia has no idea how to respond to that. That same question played on repeat in her head for _weeks_ after the Inquisition showed up at their door. How could she move on when there were two parent shaped holes carved into her chest?

She looks away from the sunset to Mélie and takes her hand, warm and solid and callused, threads their fingers together. “We’re _here_. Arthur wouldn’t want you to mourn forever. He didn’t die for that.”

Mélie squeezes her hand so hard it hurts, her jaw clenches visibly. “What _did_ he die for?”

“For you. For me, Hugo, Lucas, all of us.” She tips her head to the sunset. “For _this_. For our chance to keep living.”

“I’m scared I’ll forget him. I’m afraid that if I _live_, that if I’m happy it’s…”

“We will _never_ forget him, Mélie.” The ferocity in her voice is what finally gets Mélie to look at her, tears leaking silently down her face. “Never. Not _one_ of them. I will live for all of them if I have to. It’s what they deserve. Because they won’t ever get to see this, but we do. So enjoy it for them.”

Mélie’s hand squeezes even tighter and her watery smile is thin, a veil to hide how open she is in this moment. So are her words: “When did you get to be so wise, princess?”

Amicia laughs, lifts her free hand to scrub at the tears on her face. “We’ve lost enough. You deserve to be happy.”

“But not you?”

“I…” Her teeth click shut. Mélie seems to know what she’s thinking about. Weird.

“You should talk to her. Get it off your chest.” She bumps her shoulder into Amicia’s. “You deserve happiness too.”

\--

Amicia stands outside her mother’s room. And she has been for the last five minutes, give or take. She’s so _used_ to not being allowed to see her mother, used to Beatrice being too busy, too preoccupied for her. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t knocked yet.

“Do you need me to open it for you?”

“Go away, Mélie.”

She sucks in a deep breath, it whistles through her clenched teeth. When she exhales she doesn’t feel much calmer, but she pushes the door in anyway (without knocking) because if she doesn’t do it know she won’t do it at all.

Beatrice looks up from the chair where she’s reading by the fireplace. “Amicia?”

She clicks the door to with her heel. “We need to talk.”

Her mother closes the book around her finger. “About?”

Amicia huffs, suddenly not sure where to begin. So she starts with the thing that’s been most on her mind the last few days. “Mélie said you came to some sort of understanding. Which is good, because now we need to reach one.”

She’s pacing. When did she start pacing? “If this is about Mélie…”

“It’s not.” Not yet. Maybe later. When she can get her thoughts well enough in order. “When we… when you told us to find Laurentius, we had nothing. We stole to get by.” It’s a _little_ bit about Mélie. “Food, resources, a nice old lady gave us clothes, but it still _felt_ like stealing.”

“Amicia… You’re not a bad person for stealing to survive.”

“I know, that was my whole point about Mélie and Arthur,” she says. Her hands ball into fists and relax, they do this several times as if recognising that she’s grasping for something and not knowing what to do about it.

“Darling…” Beatrice looks worried when Amicia looks up at her. “Sit down? You can talk to me.”

The only other chair in the room is a stool and with how she’s all twisted up inside at the moment that’s probably a bad idea, she’ll fall off. She perches on the edge of the bed instead, leg bouncing up and down.

“What’s the matter?” Amicia chews on the question but her mother asks another before she can put an answer together. “Is this about Mélie?”

“No. It’s _not_ about Mélie.”

Beatrice leans forward a little. “Are you sure? Because I don’t mind if…”

“_Mother_.”

“I just… want you to be happy, Amicia.”

She is now fully convinced they are having two different conversations. When she looks up from her hands to her mother’s face, there’s a hopeful glitter in Beatrice’s eyes that supports her theory. “What does Mélie have to do with my happiness? I thought you didn’t like her.”

Beatrice smiles. It’s that same damn _knowing_ smile, too. “But _you_ like her.”

“Well, yes. She’s my friend. I…”

“Amicia, honey.” Her mother reaches out and takes her hand, stops her fidgeting. She’s still smiling. Honestly, Amicia thought this would turn into a yelling match, this is much better. Confusing, yes, but better. “Take some time and think about it, alright?”

“Think about what? How we’re friends?”

Beatrice laughs. “Yes.”

“Sure… alright.” Amicia is not convinced. (Except maybe that her mother’s injuries were more serious than Lucas thought.) “I didn’t actually want to talk about Mélie, though.”

“Well, what _did_ you want to talk about.”

She opens her mouth. Then closes it. Several things swirl around in her head but really, she probably should’ve asked Mélie to clarify what exactly she thought this conversation was going to be about. What is standing between her and happiness? Her fingers tighten around Beatrice’s.

“I’ve done awful things, mother,” she whispers.

Beatrice squeezes back. “Sweetheart, look at me.” And she does. “We are not defined solely by the things we do.”

“I’ve killed people.” Her voice cracks on the second word and the rest comes out in a breath so soft she’s sure her mother can’t hear it.

Beatrice puts her palm to Amicia’s cheek. “Oh, honey. I know.”

“They would’ve taken Hugo. They would’ve… They would’ve killed us; I…”

She’s crying. When did she start crying?

Her mother shifts from her reading chair and sits beside her on the bed, pulling her close to her chest and holding on tight. “You did what you had to, my darling girl.”

“They probably had families, mother. What makes me right and them wrong?” Her real question: I’m just the same kind of monster as them, aren’t I?

“The difference is they were fully grown men hunting children and that’s despicable,” she murmurs, rocking back and forth, smoothing a hand down her hair. “They chose to hurt you, and no one can blame you for defending yourself from men who should know better.”

“Mélie said I deserve happiness,” she says around broken sobs. “But I don’t, I’m horrible.”

“Answer me this, Amicia: did you go out of your way to kill these people?”

She shakes her head.

“That’s what makes you different, my darling. You didn’t want to, you avoided it if you could, yes?”

“Yes.”

“That’s better than them. You don’t need to be miserable for protecting yourself and your brother. You fought _for _something, they slaughtered because they were told to.”

She sniffles. “I still killed them.”

“There’s no getting away from that. All you can do is make peace with why you did it and keep going.”

And that is eerily similar to what she’d told Mélie.

Beatrice leans away, places both hands on her face and smiles. “You are a good person, my daughter. So kind and loyal and brave. You shouldn’t have had to go through what you did and you _shouldn’t_ be hard on yourself for what other people made you do.”

Amicia throws her arms around her mother’s neck and hugs for all she’s worth. She doesn’t let go until she’s cried herself dry.

\--

A whole caravan of traders’ wagons trundle through town a few weeks later just as the season is beginning to turn into summer. They set up a makeshift market on the outskirts and it revitalises the whole area. People on farms that Amicia has never seen before come in to see and trade, they bring food and seeds and fabric and tools and suddenly it feels like a real town, one with purpose and hope for a decent future.

Lucas tells them one morning after he gets back with an armful of things he definitely needs to finish his current project. And there’s a great barrel strapped to the back of the wagon.

“What the hell you need that for?” Mélie asks him, shading her eyes against the sun.

He ignores her question (something he’s been getting very good at). “Come and give me a hand with this, would you?”

She rolls her eyes but beats Amicia over to him. Together they roll the barrel off the wagon and under Lucas’ direction, line it up under the eaves up one end of the house. He yells nonsense instructions and waves with his whole body until they finally figure out how to right it and then it sits open to the sky part-way beneath the roof.

“Neat,” Mélie says flatly. “But what’s it _for_?”

“To catch rain!” he says enthusiastically.

“We have a well,” Amicia points out.

“Yes, but wells run dry, and this isn’t for drinking. Plus it’ll be nice not to have to haul up sixteen buckets of water just to do the plants and animals every day.”

Mélie gives her a Look™ but Amicia, when she looks back, says, “He does have a point. You complain every day about changing the trough water.”

“That’s because the pigs get it gross and muddy,” she replies. “Not because of how much fucking water it requires.”

“You can use it for baths, too?” Lucas offers hopefully.

Amicia breaks into a grin. Mélie rolls her eyes yet again.

\--

Of course, once Lucas let’s slip to Hugo that there’s a market in town with travelling performers, he gets _beyond_ excited.

“Is it like a fair, Lucas?”

Amicia, eyes wide, shakes her head but Lucas says, “Uh… I suppose so. I’ve never been to a fair before?”

Hugo bounces up and down. “Me too! We should go! All of us!”

And that’s how she ends up standing in the blazing almost-summer sun, holding onto Hugo’s hand as they watch a man on very tall wooden shoes juggling coloured balls. In his other hand he clutches an apple covered in some sweet, sticky sauce on the end of a stick that Mélie had ‘won’ from one of the merchants’ games. (Games that should be impossible to win, but not for Mélie’s quick fingers.)

“Amicia. Can you teach me to juggle?” he asks, watching the man on the silly shoes wend through the crowd.

“Not me. You should ask Mélie, she probably knows.”

“Alright.”

They find other things to do, simple, every day things that make her heart ache. He insists she play at another slingshot game and when she wins, Hugo clutches the sack doll the man gives him so tightly to his chest the seams look in danger of popping. He watches a man with shoulders wider than an ox-cart carrying two kids about her age on his shoulders as if they weigh nothing.

For a second, Amicia thinks the boy is Arthur. She has to look twice to see his hair is the wrong colour, his face not quite weathered enough by the world. It pangs low in her gut and she watches them disappear until Hugo pulls her onwards.

They’re standing outside a little fenced off paddock within which several lambs, a few goats and what she thinks are probably baby llamas are being watched by attendants. The animals are to be sold to farmers, but Hugo wants to pet them.

“Please,” he asks the nearest young man. “They look so soft.”

He chuckles, glances over his shoulder, and says, “Just for a minute.”

Hugo claps his hands happily and Amicia is part way through helping him over the fence when there’s an angry shout from further down the street. Her heart doesn’t leap immediately into her throat, but she does tense and turn.

And of course – _of course_ – it’s Mélie. Lucas isn’t with her so that’s probably why the commotion: she got up to mischief while he wasn’t looking. He appears out of the crowd at Amicia’s elbow a moment later.

“You might want to help her.”

“Hugo, stay with Lucas.”

He nods and watches as she strides off. There’s a crowd, but not enough of one to hamper Mélie’s progress, and also, unfortunately, not enough to hamper the progress of her pursuers. Mélie catches sight of her and slows to grab her by the arm and haul her into a side street heading into town and away from the market.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Mélie, please.”

“I bought something.”

“Oh god, why.”

Even running, Mélie spares the time to grin at her obnoxiously. “Thought I could get away with it.” They wend their way off main roads until they’re lost in a warren of back streets and alleyways. Most of them are filled with junk, old furniture thrown out as people fled the plague, scaffolding from where people were trying to fix buildings or, in some cases, instances where buildings had crumbled.

“You have a plan?”

“Duh. Where’s your sling?”

Amicia pulls it from her belt and Mélie slows, checks behind them. No one is immediately apparent and when Mélie points, Amicia follows, spots several places where scaffolding and old tables lean together awkwardly.

“That’s going to make a lot of noise when it comes down,” she warns.

The twinkle in Mélie’s eyes scares her. “Don’t worry. I thought of that.”

“How many times have you come to town with Lucas specifically to scope out places to rob.”

Mélie bobs her head back and forth, drawing Amicia away from the teetering tower of crap. “Maybe once or twice.”

“You are incorrigible.”

The sounds of the people Mélie had robbed (or attempted to rob, at least) grow louder as they approach. “Any time princess.”

“This is a _dead end_, Mélie,” she hisses. “We’ll be caught.”

“No, we won’t. Do you trust me?”

She hesitates. That’s a loaded question. With a huff, she spins up her sling and fires a rock at the place where a table leg is balanced by one corner on top of some other discarded wood. It lands with a whip-crack and, as expected, it all comes tumbling down in a horrible clatter.

The shouts grow closer but Mélie clearly _had_ thought this through. She grabs Amicia around the waist and all but shoves her through a tiny gap in a fence. She falls through awkwardly after and they land in a twisted mess on top of each other. Amicia squawks and Mélie claps a hand over her mouth.

“Shh, you’ll give us away.”

Mélie doesn’t remove her hand, so Amicia can’t ask any of the _several_ burning questions she’s thinking of. Instead she rolls her eyes up and looks around. They appear to be in an overgrown yard. Lucky, too, if they’d landed on anything other than the thick shrubbery it probably would’ve hurt a lot more.

Two men enter the alley and speak in low murmurs that Amicia can’t quite make out over the pounding of her heart and the way Mélie’s breath hitches every now and then. She gets the gist, however. The men split up, going two different ways to see about heading them off where that alley lets out.

Once their bootsteps on cobbles fade away, Mélie sits up. Doesn’t _stand_, her knees bracket Amicia’s hips and she grins that obnoxious damn grin.

This time, it’s Amicia’s breath doing the hitching. “So.” Her voice is hoarse, she clears her throat and tries again, “So, what was worth getting caught stealing, anyway?”

Mélie reaches into her back pocket and pulls something small out, it catches some of the near-non-existent light brightly, something made of metal. “This,” she breathes.

It’s a broach, or a hairclip perhaps, in the image of a long stem, feathery pinkish flower. Mélie leans down closer and – with shaking hands – slides it into her leftmost braid. Not the side where Hugo likes to put his flowers, she notes. (And then she wonders why that detail seems so important.)

Without thinking, Amicia lifts a hand to touch the clip and their fingers brush and _suddenly_ the irrelevant thought in her head is about why Mélie seems so close. So close, and so trembly, and her eyes can’t seem to figure out which of Mélie’s to focus on, or if they should focus on her eyes at all, which is weird because where else would she look?

Her mother’s advice from weeks ago blooms in the back of her head. She takes a breath but it catches and falters on the way out. Mélie’s face has gone red again for some reason.

There might be more to that, something she should ask about later, but the air feels _heavy_ between them now and it just doesn’t seem like the thing to be dwelling on.

“Amicia?”

The heaviness shifts and finally Mélie scrambles backwards off her, even extends a hand to help Amicia to her feet. They don’t make eye contact.

“Mélie?”

“Here, Hugo.” Mélie’s voice cracks on the first word. She lets Amicia leave first.

They also don’t talk about it.

\--

Amicia _does_ talk to Lucas, briefly, and not about whatever had happened with Mélie. All she wants to know is if he saw where Mélie had bought the clip. And if two days later she disappears into town for an hour or so well… that doesn’t mean anything.

\--

Hugo spots the clip later, while they’re gardening.

“That’s pretty!” he tells her. “Where did you get it?”

“Mélie got it for me. Do you know what flower it is?”

He sits up onto his knees and she ducks her head closer so he can see it better. “Yes. It’s astilbe. They call it a goat’s beard.”

She huffs a laugh. “That’s what it looks like. Does it mean something?”

“It means ‘I’ll always be waiting’, probably because the goat got so old waiting around that it grew a beard.”

“Probably,” she agrees, but her laughter dies.

Mélie is on the roof with Lucas when she looks around for her. They’re fixing part of his rain catching contraption where it had sprung a leak that allowed water into the house. She even holds Mélie’s eyes briefly, but then her face goes red like it does and she looks away again.

\--

The very next time it rains, it pours.

Rain patters so hard on the roof that Hugo tiptoes past to sleep with Beatrice for the night. It’s so loud that it drowns out Amicia’s thoughts and she finally gets some decent rest. Lightning flashes and thunder cracks sharply across the sky so it’s fitful, but decent.

Just as well, because the next morning the fence she’d so recently repaired is broken again and the cow has gone on a fearful sprint across the field towards the woods to the north.

“I’ve got the fence,” Lucas tells her blearily when she explains. “Go get the cow.”

“Take Mélie,” Beatrice adds. “I don’t need you being gored by a frightened cow.”

She exchanges glances with Mélie who just shrugs and they head out in silence. Silence to the woods, silence during their search. Silent until Mélie says, “We probably should’ve brought Arthur.”

Yes. Yes, they should definitely have done that.

They return to walking in silence.

Mélie spots the cow first, standing lock-kneed in a small clearing, trembling. They swap looks again. “How do you wanna do this, princess?”

She hunches a shoulder. “I’m practiced at shooting soldiers, not wrangling cows.”

“And I pick locks. Not exactly my field of expertise.”

“How about we just try to… I don’t know. Catch it with rope?”

“You’re a regular outlaw.”

Still, Mélie doesn’t have a better idea, so she unloops a length of rope from her belt and ties a ring in it she hopes is big enough to get over the cow’s head. Or even just one of its horns would work. They split up and circle it from different angles, hoping that maybe that will help.

Mélie gets its attention first, hands held up, body situated low, so she looks less like a threat. “Hey there… cow. Why didn’t Hugo name it?”

“Maybe he thought we’d eat her.”

“What’s a good cow name?”

Amicia rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. Renée?”

Mélie scoffs. “That’s… no. You alright there, Floria?”

Amicia has to stifle a laugh.

“What? Better than nothing.”

“What about Bette?”

“Old lady name. Bella? You were scared by the thunder, weren’t you?”

The cow eyes Mélie warily, steps a little to one side. Not closer to Amicia, more’s the pity.

“That’s okay, Bella, thunder is scary. But you’re alright now. We’ll take you home and get you some nice food, how’s that sound?”

Amicia holds the rope right by the knot and swings it around, wondering how best to get it over the cow’s horn or head. It must spot the movement, though, because it lows and backs up. Mélie takes one step closer and to the other side, trying to coax it closer to Amicia.

“Promise we won’t hurt you. Next time we’ll even put you in the barn where lightning can’t get you, alright?” Mélie keeps her voice low and soft and even, projecting that same calm-under-stress attitude she wears like armour at all times.

It works… sort of. The cow does move a little closer to Amicia – close enough that she feels confident about her aim with the rope – but apparently too close all the same. She tosses the rope at the same time the cow swings its head back, a warning motion that shows off its horns. Then it turns and she watches in slow motion as the cow dips its head and starts her way with more speed than she thought it could muster from a standing start.

“Amicia!”

Something connects with her around the middle and she hits the dirt, all the wind in her lungs whooshing free on impact. Once again, she finds herself pinned by Mélie. This time there’s no cheeky grin, though, only worry.

“You alright?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Her hands have landed on Mélie’s upper arms and that heaviness settles around them once more. Until Mélie clears her throat and pushes to her feet, as always, offering Amicia assistance.

“I guess the return of Princess Amicia the Amazon and Mélie the Fury is a little underwhelming, huh?”

Amicia ignores the levity in her words and steps into her personal space. She lifts a hand to brush a leaf out of Mélie’s hair, hums softly to herself. “Mélie the Magnificent, more like,” she mutters. “You’ll run out of fingers to count on if you keep saving my life.”

As she’d hoped, Mélie’s face flushes with pink. “Whatever. You’ll just owe me more, I guess.”

“I guess so. Which way did Lucille go?”

Mélie arches an eyebrow, her smirk covering up the blush just barely. “Towards home. Why?”

“We still have to wrangle her.”

“Oh, you got her with the rope, by the way. Good toss.”

She scrunches up her nose. “That’s not much use to us.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mélie laughs.

The tension fades, eases. By the time they get the cow back to the house it’s almost gone entirely. Mélie will even meet her eyes again. That funny warm light flickering behind them never disappears but Amicia thinks she might have finally figured out what it is.

\--

After consulting Hugo, they settle on calling the cow Magnolia.

\--

Summer spends about a week being unbearably hot and sticky. Then it rains again for three days and when the showers finally pass the air is cool, crisp, the first indication that the season is turning.

That’s the night Hugo calls Amicia to account on her promise to teach him how to dance.

She groans but doesn’t mean it. Lucas facilitates Hugo’s exuberance by collecting driftwood from the beach and scraps from fixing the fence and builds them a bonfire behind the barn (so as not to scare the animals, he says).

Hugo hangs between Amicia and Mélie, holding one hand of each of them and they swing him along as they walk to a soundtrack of his happy giggles.

“Higher!” he demands, and they oblige.

“Don’t know how you’re going to dance, princess,” Mélie says sitting across the fire from her, leaning back on her palms. “There’s no music.”

“We’ll improvise.”

“I can whistle,” Lucas offers, and they laugh when he demonstrates. Not at him, he’s off-key but not that bad. It’s just nice to spend some time being silly, probably, it fills them with cheer that has to go somewhere.

Hugo’s not tall enough for proper dancing, so he stands on Amicia’s feet and she teaches him the steps. It’s nothing fancy, the same box-step her father had taught her so long ago. She’d really felt like a princess when she stood on his feet and he whirled her around her bedroom.

It’s a similar principle, really, but now it’s when she looks at Mélie that she feels like a princess.

That thought makes her miss a step, but no one notices. Mélie’s too busy looking at her face to see how her feet stumble. And the only person who can know how her heart skips is her.

She focuses back on Hugo, determined to get this right for him if for no other reason. He laughs loudly when she pretends to be spun by him and pretty soon he’s moving on his own. Not fully comfortable in the movements, but he’s quick enough to figure it out. When he’s not beaming up at her he’s frowning at his feet to make sure he gets it right.

When Lucas grows tired of whistling Hugo takes that as a sign for a break. “Did you see, Lucas? I can dance!”

“You sure can. You’ll be a master in no time.”

“Go again?”

Lucas shakes his head. “My throat hurts from whistling.”

Undeterred, Hugo grabs his sleeve and tugs. “Come on, come on. I’ll show you how to dance.”

Amicia laughs, the first genuine happiness in a long time blooming warm and blurry in her heart. Somehow, that feeling (or something a lot like it) has become associated with Mélie in her mind, so she looks around, but can’t spot her.

“She left a little while ago,” Lucas says. He gets distracted for a moment by Hugo but then he adds, “Said there was no way you were getting her to dance and distance was the only safe way to be sure of it.”

“Did you see which way she went?”

He tips his head. “Towards the bluff.”

She lifts a hand. “I’ll see you back at the house.”

He hums, too busy focusing on Hugo again. “That can’t be right,” she hears him mutter as she walks off into the darkness. This time, she doesn’t even feel the need to bring a torch.

She’s careful where she puts her feet on her way down the slope but there’s more than enough moonlight to light her way. It’s also enough light to make it plain that Mélie’s not on the bluff. Squinting into the darkness, she spots a flicker of movement and heads towards it. Even just a few weeks earlier she wouldn’t have gone near a moving bush without plenty of preparation and also fire, but right now she’s just wondering how Mélie could’ve disappeared into thin air. She’s good, but she’s not _that_ good.

Very slowly, Amicia pushes past the bush, it’s only waist-high and not very thick. Just past it there’s a narrow trail heading down the bluff. It seems ill-advised to walk down it in the dark, but she can see what is definitely a person-shaped silhouette moving along the trail and so, assuming that’s Mélie, she follows.

It takes her a good ten or fifteen minutes to get to the bottom, focusing all her attention on where she puts her feet the whole way down, and when her boots step off the last rock they land in sand and sink just a little under her weight. When she finally has the chance to look around her, she’s honestly terrified Mélie will have vanished somewhere else.

Instead, Amicia spots her walking along the wet sand right down where the waves lap up the beach, lit by the soft backdrop of the endless void where the ocean meets the sky. Her heart stops in her chest and she forgets to breathe for a second or eight until she shakes herself free. Kicking off her boots, Amicia squishes through the sand to join her.

“Mélie,” she says softly as she approaches, although she’s pretty sure the squeaking of her feet announced her presence just fine. “Hope you’re not thinking about walking out into the ocean and never coming back.”

Mélie looks up, face illuminated in a strange, unearthly way by the moon. “Never come back? Absurd.”

Unconsciously, she reaches up to touch the pin. _I’ll always be waiting_. She takes another deep breath and closes the last of the space between them. Waves swish up around her ankles. Amicia reaches into her belt pouch and pulls out a string that glitters purest silver under the moon.

She lifts it until Mélie can see properly the pendant dangling from the end; a little green shoot bearing rounded yellow flowers.

It’s _visible_ when recognition flickers across Mélie’s face and her throat bobs as her breath hitches. She dips her head forward just a little so Amicia can slip the necklace over her head. Her hands linger against Mélie’s scarf, fingers fiddling with the fabric, smoothing it unnecessarily before she withdraws.

“Does Hugo have a meaning for it?” Mélie asks her in a voice so soft Amicia has to lean closer to hear.

“No.” Then she corrects herself. “I didn’t have to ask him for one.”

Mélie looks up from rubbing the pad of her thumb over the flower and meets her eyes. “A meaningless flower?”

Amicia tilts her head to the side and offers her best approximation of Mélie’s obnoxious half-smile. “I think we both know it’s not that.”

Mélie’s hand closes tightly around the metal. “Your namesake.” Her voice breaks and in an even softer voice she asks, “Why?”

“Why would you always be waiting?” she fires back. Her mouth tries to add ‘for me’ on the end but she manages to bite it off. Mélie clearly hears it anyway.

Mélie’s mouth works and when sound finally emerges, it’s strained. “I told you that you deserve happiness, Amicia. And I meant it. No matter how long that takes.”

Amicia shifts her foot just a little until her toes bump Mélie’s. “Awful presumptuous of you to assume you have any impact on my happiness.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mélie mutters, eyes lidded.

“Yes, you do,” Amicia laughs. “You’re smarter than you pretend to be.”

“So you’re saying that I don’t make you happy?”

“I’m saying you don’t have to _wait_ to make me happy.”

“I don’t know…”

“Maybe you’re dumber than I thought.” Amicia lifts shaking hands to Mélie’s scarf again, her fingers tighten reflexively on the fabric and, with an uneven breath, pulls her closer.

“Oh,” Mélie whispers, only it’s more of an exhale and Amicia feels it against her lips rather than hears it with her ears. After a moment of hesitation (deliberation?), Mélie tilts her head forward and kisses her.

Hesitant at first, as if Mélie thinks Amicia has made a mistake and will pull away. So she hooks an elbow further around Mélie’s shoulders. Her other hand finds one of Mélie’s trembling ones and tangles their fingers together.

Whatever misgivings Mélie has clearly vaporise with that because even though her hands don’t stop shaking, her free one comes up to land, warm and solid, against Amicia’s hip and she tips her head the other way. Their noses bump before Mélie finds her mouth again and she kisses harder this time, like she’s trying to pour her entire being into it.

(It’s maybe the _second_ truly honest thing she’s seen from Mélie in months.)

Amicia holds tighter, so tightly she’s pretty sure Mélie is the only thing holding her up. Which is unfortunate because _obviously_, _she’s_ the only thing holding Mélie up too. This becomes apparent when they both lose their footing in the loose sand and go tumbling to the ground.

As is apparently becoming normal for them, Amicia is the one pinned. Just not for long this time. Mélie smiles broadly and flops over onto her back.

“What?” Amicia asks her.

When Mélie rolls her head around she’s still got this stupid smile on her face. It’s infectious. “I was starting to think you knew what I was doing and just weren’t interested.”

“What do you mean?”

Mélie’s mouth works, the smile fading. “You had no idea. Did you?”

She shakes her head, not caring about getting sand in her hair. “About what?”

“All those things I said…?” She blinks but Amicia still doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “I never tell anyone about myself. I suggested we share a room. Shit. I came back for _you_, Amicia.”

“Oh… _Oh_, that was all... Well, alright.”

Mélie smiles crookedly. “Yeah. What clued you in?”

“You stole me a hairclip.”

She laughs and it’s maybe the _third_ honest thing. “You’re pretty dense, you know that.”

“Not like you did any better.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, Mélie,” she says softly, twisting so she can brush hair out of the other girl’s face. “I told you your compensation for helping us was me, you oblivious moron.”

Mélie’s face goes bright red under her hand. “You… meant that how it sounded, huh?”

Amicia shrugs. “I don’t think I knew at the time, I was still figuring out,” she waves a hand vaguely at Mélie’s face, “but yes. I meant it.”

With her stupid smile back in place, Mélie mimics her gesture. “Figuring out,” her waving gets more emphatic, “what?”

Amicia sighs. “That your silly face is distracting.”

“Oh, my _silly_ face.”

“Yes, it’s very silly. Have you seen it?”

“No, because I’m too busy being all,” she wobbles a hand at Amicia this time, “caught up in that.”

She laughs. “In _what_?”

Mélie huffs. “You know. Your dumb face.”

“My _dumb_ face?”

“Yeah. Only a dumb face can be that pretty.”

Amicia sits up, laughing as she looks down at Mélie, but she’s not wearing her obnoxious face this time, instead it’s soft, earnest. “You think I’m _pretty_?”

“I don’t rescue ugly people. That’s why I let you beat up all those soldiers.”

She stands slowly, tugging on Mélie’s hands as she rises to pull her up too. Then she leans in and says, “I think you’re pretty too, Mélie. Now let’s go. It’s cold down here.”

When she turns to walk off, Mélie stops her short, drawing her back in by their still joined hands. And when they’re close enough, she presses her lips against the corner of Amicia’s mouth. Driven by instinct only, Amicia turns her head and then she forgets literally what she _just_ said because Mélie is distracting. Surprisingly, she’s not so cold anymore.

Eventually, she does manage to pull away and lead Mélie back towards the trail up the bluff. They’ve barely reached the top when Mélie stops and looks at her with wide, alarmed eyes.

“Don’t tell your mother.”

“Why?”

She leans in and Amicia isn’t the slightest bit inclined to dissuade her. When they part this time it takes Amicia a few beats to focus again and when she does it’s on Mélie’s stupid crooked smile. Without pulling away properly, Mélie mutters against her mouth, “She won’t let us share a room anymore.”

Amicia tips her head back and laughs, holding on tighter to Mélie’s hand. It might just be the first _honest_ feeling she’s succumbed to in months.

Behind them, the previously empty void fills in with twinkling starlight.


End file.
